City Council approves Rockford Rescue Mission expansion

ROCKFORD — City Council members voted to allow the Rockford Rescue Mission to expand its main facility at 715 West State St.

The two-story, 25,700 square-foot expansion will allow the Mission to combine its Women’s Crisis Center located on Cedar Street with its main campus. The addition will bring 12 more crisis shelter beds for women and children and 32 additional beds for the women’s life recovery program, a one-year program to help women in desperate circumstances find jobs, recover from addiction and further their education.

“We lost beds when the Mission’s property was acquired in 2007 to make room for the Winnebago County Justice Center, and now we need them more than ever,” Executive Director Sherry Pitney said. “With the recent economic struggles face by our region, our need to help people — especially women and children who never before needed us — has drastically increased.”

In the last three years, the women’s programs were forced to turn away nearly 500 women and children due to lack of space, Pitney said. She said about 85 percent of people seeking services are from the Rockford community.

The addition also prevents those at the existing center on Cedar from walking to the West State facility for meals and will save operational costs for the Mission.

Aldermen voted 11-1 to approve the zoning required to allow the Mission to expand. Ald. Venita Hervey, D-5, voted against because she said expanding the Mission further concentrates poverty in one area of town.

“I’m opposed to Rockford continuing to bring into our city huge populations of people who are indigent, who are in poverty, when we have one of the highest unemployment rates in the state,” Hervey said. “Why do you bring people who need hope into a place that doesn’t have enough? ... Then, why do you concentrate them in areas that are already overtaxed with social ills.”